Addendum: this week, I would like to see you engage your classmates' ideas. Agree or disagree (respectfully, of course), but a back and forth is preferable. Also, I know that this is, in some ways, a difficult text. It's okay to be a little unclear about the argument. I'd like to see a serious engagement below, however, even if you don't fully understand. You can say so if you don't. You can also take issue with the argument if you disagree. Just make sure that engagement is serious and respectful.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Week 5: Silencing the Past
Contribute at least one comment to our blog’s Week 5 Discussion Post prompted by your reading of Michele Trouillot’s Silencing the Past. Is history “written by the winners”? Is that what Trouillot is getting at, or is it something else? How does Trouillot move past the debate between empiricists and relativists? What does he mean when he says "Power is constitutive of the story" (28)? What are some examples – and some silences – of power at work in Americans’ collective historical memory? Complete your comments by 10 pm on Monday, Sept. 22nd, and make sure you’ve read the entire discussion by class on Tuesday.
Addendum: this week, I would like to see you engage your classmates' ideas. Agree or disagree (respectfully, of course), but a back and forth is preferable. Also, I know that this is, in some ways, a difficult text. It's okay to be a little unclear about the argument. I'd like to see a serious engagement below, however, even if you don't fully understand. You can say so if you don't. You can also take issue with the argument if you disagree. Just make sure that engagement is serious and respectful.
Addendum: this week, I would like to see you engage your classmates' ideas. Agree or disagree (respectfully, of course), but a back and forth is preferable. Also, I know that this is, in some ways, a difficult text. It's okay to be a little unclear about the argument. I'd like to see a serious engagement below, however, even if you don't fully understand. You can say so if you don't. You can also take issue with the argument if you disagree. Just make sure that engagement is serious and respectful.
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The saying “history is written by the winners” is often regarded as a cynical perspective of the historical record. I would argue that rather than cynical it is an undeniably realistic approach to how history has been created. As Trouillot suggests often the “losers” are not left alive or at liberty to recount their story leading to the gaps in history we now face. In support of this, we have been talking about a rise of social history in the past century focusing on telling the previously untold stories of the common man or women or minorities. The common person is never the winner, nor were women or minorities for most of the three thousand years historians have traditionally documented. This topic leads us further to the question of what the purpose of history is. If the purpose is to help build a cultural or national identity, then there are stories that have to be omitted as to not clash with, or confuse the narrative. In that case the winners are not only the writers, but also the recipients of history and the narrative is shaped with that in mind.
ReplyDeleteOur collective memory as Americans frequently omits our numerous and frequent atrocities and negative events that challenge our own view of ourselves as Americans. For example, as the “land of the free” we easily forget the internment of the Japanese Americans during WWII and the extensive persecution of the Native Americans by our forefathers here to escape their own persecution. We also like to forget about our empire building ambitions in instigating the Spanish American and Mexican American wars. And we frequently forget the role the Soviet Union played in the Second World War. Other than a brief mention of the battle of Stalingrad, we like to think of ourselves as the liberators of Europe and the defenders of freedom rather than the cleanup hitter who is able to drive in three runs after our teammates all got on base and the outfielders froze to death in Russia. These omissions serve to further promote our narrative and identity as a nation, and as the victors of not only World War Two, but also the Cold War our version of events gets to remain unchallenged. Again, this is not necessarily a major issue or fault with the discipline. If we can be mature enough to understand why history is written as it is, we can acknowledge the benefits of our historical narrative while also allowing for its shortcomings. In fact, we can also examine which stories are being told and which are not and get a better understanding of ourselves and other groups in other times and places whose narrative differ from our own.
Cornelius, I must agree with your opening two lines. Trouillot argues that words, terminologies, and those with the most archival power then debate "what happened and that which is said to have happened". How far away from each other are the concepts of Manifest Destiny and Lebensraum, or American Exceptionalism and Sonderweg? He states that facts are never meaningless and are not created equal. If his argument (s) concern primarily the concept of historical production, that we are all participants and observers, actors, narrators, and censors...then is there an assumed or sub-conscience desire to establish moral authority, or truth (historically or philosophically), as suggested by his critique of Hayden White's constructivist versus positivism might imply? By this, I refer to your question of "what the purpose of history is?" I would argue (quite possibly incorrectly) that more contemporary Americans are more of reminded of Native American's existence by the names of sporting teams than by memories of histories, visits to reservations, or actual physical interaction. By changing these "offensive" nicknames from teams...would we be collectively further destroying America's albeit uncomfortable and often guilty relationship with our own past? Or do the nicknames make the erasure and banalization complete?
DeleteIs the production of history indeed the competition of different historical narratives with unequal access to the means of that production (to take from Trouillot)? If so...for what purpose; to establish moral authority, to give shape to collectivism, or to search for meaning and not necessarily truth? As he quotes Derrida, "How literally can we take the claim that there is no life beyond the text?" Trouillot argues that "getting out of the text enables us also to get out of the tyranny of the facts". Are we as historians capable of this, or for the vast majority of people, do the winners just get to make the rules?
That's a great question: what's at stake here? Why does it matter that the construction of history produces and reproduces power? If history results from the competition of different narratives, some of which are ultimately silenced and some of which are emphasized, who benefits?
Deletescottirishrebel- That was a really interesting question, it made me think about the author’s views. Trouillot seems to think that” we can move out of the text” by means of activism (I think.) He says with this quote: “But no amount of historical research about the Holocaust and no amount of guilt about Germany's past can serve as a substitute for marching in the streets against German skinheads today. Fortunately, quite a few prominent German historians understand that much."(150). I could be horribly wrong however… And if I’m not I don’t know how comfortable I would be doing it? It really makes me think of the role of the historian in general. What do you make of that quote in context to your questions?
DeleteTommy,
DeleteI totally understand your interpretation of that quote. (I think!) I too am uncomfortable with the implications as well...and perhaps the cohort might agree or view things differently. But great point...and hopefully it can be discussed in class.
For me, it is hard to say whether or not a winner can write a history. We must start from the definition of history power. The author doesn’t tell us the definition of history power directly, but show this by the tension between “silence” and “method” to tell reader what is history power and where it comes from.
ReplyDeleteAccording author’s argument, if the history power is a power controls the history writing, then the power comes from two sides. First, history itself, that is, as author have methoded, the history’ silence exists in the source of history, the narrative of history, the significance of history, in other word, history can’t avoid silence, no matter there is a political power control it or not. For example, sources are limited which can’t show whole picture of history. People’s narratives are limited and they can’t report everything about the past. Because of this two points, the significance of an event also can’t vale free. In a word, the silence is a natural and indispensible part of history. As author have said, “silences are necessary to the account, for if the sportscaster told us every‘thing’ that happened at each and every moment, we would not understand anything. ” Second, the power from outside word such as government, people’s view about world. For example, the general silence happened in Haitian revolution. Partly because this was an unthinkable history beyond everyone’s imagine, partly because government thought this was not a glory event, partly because historians didn’t care colonist, racist issue, this revolution became silence around the world for many years.
Then we can return to the question whether or not a winner can write the history. If the “write” means “control”, my answer is “no”. On the one hand, there are many other history powers, especially the history itself, people can’t create the history. On the other hand, even if they can create the history, the past always can divert people from the injustice judgment about history. For example, there are always some contradictions in the dishonest history, which will attract the latter historians to reinterpret.
@Cornelius-I think Trouillot simultaneously jokes around with and takes seriously the notion that the winners write history. For instance, when he talks about the Haitian Revolution he describes the European reaction as being almost a stupified state of belief. They refer to the revolution as "revolt" instead of a revolution because they cannot comprehend the notion that blacks led a revolution. So, one on hand this ties into the notion of crafting an ethnocentric history (one in which white people are superior), but it also kind of makes fun of the winners who wrote the history by describing them as being too stupified, rather than too nationalistic, to call the Haitian Revolution a revolution.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, I think he also toys with the notion that there can be multiple "winners," especially if they are geographically separated. For instance, in his section on Columbus he talks about how Americans, Europeans and native peoples of the Americas all lay claim to Columbus and create a history about him. In this sense, I think he embraces relativism. For Trouillot, a group or society's interpretation of the past depends upon the present atmosphere.
Along that same thread, he treats Disney's planned theme park that was going to display slavery as inappropriate because U.S. is too close to African slavery in order to respectfully display it, even if the attractions were crafted skillfully. On the other hand, he treats the U.S. as much more capable of displaying the Holocaust, perhpas because it is farther removed from it than Germany or Poland.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the text, because Trouillot comes off as a relaitvist to me. He seems to judge an individual or a society's ability to handle an historical event on a scale of its current relation to that event. Perhaps his empiricism comes in through the fact that he believes certain individuals or society's are better equipped to handle certain historical events.
I'm inclined to agree with your assessment of Trouillot as a relativist, because of the examples you provided reading geography and physical distance sort of equating to emotional distance. Distance, both physical and emotional, can provide less absolutes because the perspective is more objective--less attached. His example of the Alamo was interesting to me. Both of the groups that are involved with the "second Alamo", the International Tribal COuncil of American Indians and The Daughters of the Republic of Texas (the grounds' current curators), are indeed very close emotionally and geographically. I believe that is what is leading to the debate being taken to the streets in the form of demonstrations and parades by the Hispanic Americans who claim American Indian ancestry.
DeleteThe Alamo example also provides a commentary on the question of whether or not history is written by the winners and/or if Trouillot's "history is the fruit of power" thesis is true. I think the Alamo example provides an example of the shift that Cornelius talked about above, after the establishment of social historians and their way of narrating history. The American Indian advocates want to have the grounds adjacent to the Alamo recognized as sacred American Indian land, because of those American Indians that are buried there. Those people and their stories are a part of the history of the people as well as of the area and of the battle at the Alamo. It's a narrative that (if I read the book right) not told by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, maybe because those stories are not flattering to the accepted traditional story of the battle. Perhaps telling the "other side" from a social history standpoint would highlight more of what Trouillot was talking about, the debate on whether or not Santa Anna was a merciless dictator vs. whether or not the Alamo was a fallout from U.S. brutal territorial expansion. These debates that Trouillot touches on are an example of his relativism and that, up until social historians came on the scene, the commonly accepted histories went largely uncontested. Interesting to see how history, truth, memory, relativism and power/winners are more interwoven than I thought.
What I think Trouillot is advocating is that history is not objective because many factors are taken into account for the sociohistorical process. Trouillot mentions that history has been produced outside of academia; media, museums, primary school books, etc, pg 20.
ReplyDeleteHow is history influenced by power and silence? Do the winners write history? Does Trouillot argue since we don’t have access to past interpretations of history provided by powerful agents, it’s difficult to find objectivity in historical knowledge because we cannot verify empirically those past interpretations? Also, material forms of history may have more credibility because they are harder to silence.
I’m thinking that Trouillot argues that power and silence are compatible with each other. For example, Columbus Day was promoted for the Chicago fair. This historical event was produced by powerful commercial interest. These powerful groups were able to silence the true historical fact of conquest. Various ethnic and religious groups welcomed the Chicago fair as vindication of their existence (pg. 132). Consequently, the fair produced millions of dollars. Ethnic groups such as Irish and Italian groups adopted Columbus as their own and utilized the concept to establish a citizen culture (pg. 123).
Based on Trouillot argument I think he is a relativist. My question is with Trouillot historical research practice. In obtaining the research and selecting the information to be utilized for research is he subjective? How does a research avoid personal bias? How does the researcher justify the selection of facts utilized to meet professional standards? What does he say about the power of words used to justify the selection of facts?
Eddie I agree with your statement that Trouillot is a relativist. I believe that he is trying to get us to view the production of history in terms of the cultural significance that societies place on events, sources, archives, etc. Through the actions of determining what is considered significant and what is not, he displays that the creation of sources, archives, and narratives is an active process by which silences and mentions are created both accidentally and deliberately. The problem, that Trouillot argues, is not that this process happens rather that there is a tendency among western historians to continue the positivist tradition. There by deeming the mentions as historical fact, and the silences as irrelevant. He states that the struggle to create a history of the Haitian Revolution was so difficult because it was an event that went against the ontological order of the West, which was developed during the Renaissance and reaffirmed during the Enlightenment. Because it was a revolution led by slaves, for their own interests uninfluenced by outside pressure, that actually happened and was successful served as a major challenge to the dominant world view held by Europeans and thus was considered unthinkable. What makes this process even more complicated is that Haitians will prescribed to a narrative that doesn’t tell the whole story because illiteracy or because the elite classes are trying to affirm their position in society, so discussing the war within the war becomes an event that is better left untouched.
ReplyDeleteSure, Trouillot is a "relativist," broadly defined. To be a little more precise, he's pretty Foucauldian in his argument. But he also moves past the increasingly-dated Truth v. Relativism argument in a pretty interesting way; he shifts the terrain of that debate fundamentally.
ReplyDeleteIt seems after reading Silencing the Past that Troillot is a post-modernist. He more-or-less specifically states this on page xviii when he defends post-modernity by throwing an "us" in there. How, seeing that the overall tone of the book resembles an postmodernist, "there is no truth" perspective can any empiricist take it as anything more than a dogmatic smear campaign against historical truth whose motive is to further legitimize the methodology of relativists? We have discussed in class that truth is relative, to an extent, but fact, or something at least closely resembling fact, is still deducible via professional research. This is clearly an argument that Trouillot would be clearly against. I guess what I am saying is that I don't think Troillot changes the terrain of the debate fundamentally because he still ends up on one side of it and reiterates what professional historians have largely known for the past fifty years, that many of the sources and prior history written in America, by Americans, is nationalistic, silent, and exemplar. Social and cultural historians already shifted this debate prior Trouillot's contribution to the historical narrative (though I will admit endeavoring to know how history works rather than what is history is a clever notion).
DeleteThe fascinating thing Trouillot does when stating that „Power is constitutive of the story“ is that he moves us further in our discussion about how historians are subjective during their work. He makes clear that the „power play“ starts way before historians go to archives and choose their sources or make subjective interpretations. As far as I know Foucault and Derrida which seem to inspire Trouillot have pointed out that power relations are inscribed in every form of human interaction. Since writing history is a form of discourse about human interaction certainly power is constitutive of the story. But as already stated the influence of power is much deeper. World views and mentalities determine how contemporaries can understand and account past events. They create facts which always are meaningful. By deciding which facts go into archives many others are silenced. Archiving in Trouillot's sense does not mean intentionally preserving something for academical research. It includes non-academical entities which often unconsciously decide what is important and what not. Returning to relativism it appears that it can never ultimately achieve what it seeks for, because the historian's possibility to reconstruct the past is already shaped by silences - no matter which perspective he decides to view it from.
ReplyDelete@Micheal Taylor: On the one hand I would agree with you saying that it seems like Trouillot makes a statement about „non-related“ nations being more able to write a profound history on past events. On the other hand the first part of the book gave another impression. Here, I guess, Trouillot, especially as a Hatian historian, held the opinion that nations who had a certain history „imposed“ on them should start over again and write their own history.
In Silencing the Past, Michel Trouillot insists “no historian, no narrator of the past, has access to all sources, nor deems each source of the same value or power in creating the narration. To some genuine extent each historical narrative is a fictional story, but with special power.” Understanding what history is hopeless to Trouillot because it is constantly influx, or changes with time and place. It is more important to understand how history works then how.
ReplyDeleteThe methodologies of both empiricists and relativists is inherently wrong, since it is culturally arbitrary and based on the collection of sources deemed worthy of acknowledging, either by archives or historians, and in many cases is not even there (e.g. Haitian’s had low literacy and primary sources were largely western and littered with French bias). Moreover, Troillot writes “History exists only in relation to the present because we can only know and understand the past from the position in we currently are.” This insight further augments Trouillot’s belief that understanding history is hopeless suggesting that he is a relativist—since he does not believe history can be devoid of fiction.
“Power is constitutive to the story,” is a Foucauldian notion, further legitimates the claim that Trouillot is a relativist. This notion means that the story that is history is largely determined by those in power. The past and its victims (i.e. marginalized groups) are largely missing from the sources and historical narrative, therefore affectively being silenced. History as we know it, at least up to the 1960s and the popularization of social history, had been largely told from the viewpoint of the winners. Power shaped the story of history.
One silence in America’s collective memory, according to Trouillot, is Christopher Columbus. He is celebrated as a hero and exonerated from all of his atrocities against Natives because he discovered the Bahamas. American exceptionalism has led to most not caring about these pernicious details. Other silences in America’s collective memory, that I can think of at the top pf my head, are the post-Reconstruction Era in terms of civil rights, Thanksgiving—for obvious reasons, motives for joining WWI, WWII American atrocities, etc. American collective memory overshadows the historical accuracy of these events in favor a nationalistic positive self-image.
The shift from ‘what is history’ to ‘how does history work’ is a crucial point you raised Ramon. And perhaps how Trouillot explores the latter question is how he effectively shifts the Truth vs. Relativism argument. It seems to me that constructivists or relativists have been lukewarm as strategies for tracking power and silences within historical narratives. And that what matters most when thinking about the production of history “are the process and conditions of production of such narratives” (25). And that only through the ‘overlap’ of the ‘two sides of historicity’ can we start to accomplish our moral task, which is to ‘deconstruct' the silences in the histories we engage. So maybe we should consider the various tools that he mentions (on page 26) in the production of history, especially if we care about how history is being produced on a massive scale, and how much of that same history benefits a select few. Trouillot’s concerns are legitimate: as historians we should think that the historical narrative must take into account the social process and subjectivities of those in question, and also our position as agents producing the historical narrative.
DeleteSorry, *Richard*
DeleteThe interesting thing about silencing the past is that while, as the rest of us seem to have established, the author seems to be somewhat in a relativist camp, he shows that how some facts, no matter whose view point you’re looking at them, aren't equal. He demonstrates this with his narrative on Haiti and the "Three Sans Souci". While Souci, the man, seems like a prominent figure from the "War Between Wars" in the Haitian Revolution, Trouillot exclaims there were barely any archival sources on him, thus he was silenced by an “archival power”. This is significant because it points out flaws with both relativism and empiricists. Without the sources you can’t even hope to make a relativist view on Souci, let alone an empirical one. It made me think that you can’t be entirely hung up on just how we practice the study history in regards to empiricism or relativism , even though we must be cautious of our own “power” over it as well as the author states, but we should be critical the source of facts as well. Trouillot goes on to say that Souci was almost a blemish to the elite Haitians, who didn’t fit with their narrative on the revolution, and was another source of his silencing. These silences are perpetuated by other writers inadvertently because of “the rules of the time” (53). So right from the source of the facts is where we can get discrepancies of fact because of other “consumers” of history and the power they exert.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting term that Trouillot coined was narrativization, as in Columbus' landing on Hispaniola in 1492 "facilitates the narrativization of history, the transformation of what happened into that which is said to have happened" (113). Clearly, he uses this statement to reiterate the fact that history is written by the winners. This topic, especially when it pertains to Columbus, bothers me like no other. It amazes me that people teach our younger generations the lies about the evolution of what came to be the United States. That we will never know how many millions of indigenous people died at the hands of Europeans and their germs brings back the conversation we had last week about the exact numbers of those killed during the Holocaust. As Trouillot says, it is this defining fact that enacts power, but arguably the power is in the retelling of the narrative.
ReplyDeleteFor those interested in a comical rendition of Columbus Day, see this link. Come October 12, I know I will be celebrating Columbus is a Turd Day! :)
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day
Trouillot seems to be firmly in the relativist camp, but he adds important nuances to the our conversations about truth and relativism. As Professor Malka notes in Tim’s blog post “he [Trouillot] is pretty Foucauldian in his argument.” I see that tendency in lines such as “I saw the nostalgia of the entire West for a history that it never lived, its constant longing for a place that exists only in its minds.” I believe that the power of nostalgia and the constraints of imagination are key to Trouillot’s analyses in Silencing the Past. It seems that Trouillot believes that history is an intellectual creation that is regulated both by a writers ability to envision a past and steered by levels of mediation in sources/archives/narrative.
ReplyDeleteI also think that Tim made an interesting point about the “active process” of silencing. I thought it was telling of the authors view of the production of history in his use of the verb “silencing” in the title of his book. I am not trying to make a simple point here-- it seems that the active process of silencing is fundamental, in Trouillot’s mind, to the production of history. Every step in the process of creating history is a point of mediation between the historical event and the narrative account that a historian produces. Trouillot argues that “the naming of the ‘fact‘ is itself a narrative of power disguised as innocence.” In this way, Trouillot contends that mediation of historical events occur at many levels in the process of creating history and are often codified archives/sources/ and the creation of “moments in history.